An Interesting Career Experience
I was shooting a jewelry ad for Frederick & Nelson. It was based on a story about a lady in Boston who used to walk her pet lion on a pearl leash through the streets. The art director thought it would be a cute idea to have a model’s hand holding the strand of pearls we were photographing as if it were a leash. The other end would go around an actual lion cub’s neck. We contracted to have a local animal trainer who provided animals for films to have a lion cub at my studio on the day of the shoot.

When the lion was about to arrive via the freight elevator at the back of our building I notified the other tenant’s to just stay inside until the lion cub was safely in my studio. At the appointed time I went to the freight elevator to escort the animal trainer and his lion cub to my studio. The freight elevator stopped at my floor, the doors opened and there stood a full grown, adult lion. Not a cub. A 300 pound (at least) full grown lion. I figured there was nothing I could do at this point and escorted the trainer and the lion to my studio.

Once inside the studio the trainer would throw raw pieces of meat on the floor to coax the lion to whatever spot we wanted him. I wanted the lion on our cyc sitting facing my camera. The trainer accomplished this without too much trouble. The model, who was expecting a lion cub, refused to get anywhere near a full grown lion…and I certainly don’t blame her. The art director and I decided we could shoot the model’s hand separately and retouch it into the shot (this was long before the days of Photoshop).

In order to get a good shooting angle on the lion I was kneeling with my camera about as high as the lion’s eyes. After a few shots the lion decided he’d had enough and walked over to his trainer. The trainer explicitly told us that if the lion wanted to go somewhere we should let it and not try to direct it ourselves. In fact, he told us that if the lion started to move we should all just remain perfectly still and not do anything at all. I don’t really think he needed to warn us. None of us were the kind of people who would try to corral a lion.

After the lion left the cyc the first time the trainer once again threw down slabs of meat to bring the lion back to the cyc for more photographs. This time the lion decided he’d rather lay down on his stomach rather than sit upright. Figuring it was futile to try to get the lion to sit back up I lay down on my stock also with the camera at my face. As I was shooting the lion got up and left the frame of my camera. Since I was on my stomach I heeded the trainer’s advice and decided to just stay on my stomach with my camera still up to my eye. I figured in a moment the trainer would have the lion back in place. It was like watching a little movie unfold in my camera’s viewfiender. First there’s this lion staring directly, then he gets up and exits stage right. However, this time the next thing I experienced was a very heavy weight on my back, the sound of breathing in my ear, and a tongue (a very large tongue) licking my neck. Since I didn’t have a dog it didn’t take me any time at all to figure out what this thing on my back was.

I’m not an idiot so I didn’t do anything…I didn’t do anything at all. I didn’t try to get up. I didn’t try to turn around just to be face to face with a lion. I didn’t make a sound. Fortunately no one else did either. They probably were in shock at the possibility that they might actually see a photographer eaten alive by a lion. This isn’t something that happens in Seattle every day.

Strangely enough, and probably because I couldn’t actually see what was happening, I didn’t feel afraid at all. It really did feel like a dog licking my neck. And I love dogs. So it wasn’t that hard to remain calm. I’m not sure how long this went on but the trainer did get the lion off of my back fairly quickly using those raw slabs of meat again.

The rest that shoot is kind of a blur in my memory. I don’t remember if we tried to get any more shots of the lion after that or if we decided whatever we already would have to do. I kind of think it was the latter. We must have shot the model’s hand at some point because about a week later the ad appeared in the Seattle Times. I just hope they sold a lot of pearl necklace’s with that ad.

Please note that the photograph used in the Subterfuge Seattle header was generously provided by Howard Petrella.